Symptoms of Covid-19

Split from the Coronavirus Worldwide Spread and Control thread

From the COVID-19 symptom tracker app:



It shows the prominence of loss of smell. This is data from the UK. It looks like they’re using people who have been tested in this graph.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/us

Ive been recording on the UK app though every day. And most people don’t get tested. So I wonder how they track symptoms and what they use to say “this is coronavirus”? I’ve been recording unusual fatigue, shortness of breath, headache, sore throat, for the past 3-4 days, but I’m pretty sure that’s because of allergies, some kind of pollen allergy combined with worse asthma, but I’m recording it anyway because those are my day to day symptoms.

It also shows that just using cough & fever as a way of finding symptomatic people, isn’t good enough.

There is an open letter: “A collective letter requesting transparency on the evidence behind the period (7 days from onset of symptoms) and indication (only cough or fever) for self-isolation as per UK guidance, which is different from most other countries. Please share.”(Dr Nisreen Alwan) which is about this: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSca2En67yMi1JnK1CX4COAJSxmySZni0B0NGgYp21GxkElm6w/viewform

“We are also concerned about the narrow spectrum of symptoms the UK is using as an indication for self-isolation. Initial data demonstrate that other common symptoms include sore throat, fatigue, shortness of breath, and myalgia and we are aware that other countries are using a broader range of symptoms for self-isolation.”

 

This is very interesting. Our CDC is emphasizing cough & fever, too.

Our biggest study from the town of Heinsberg reported loss of smell in two thirds of the cases though.

When I got sick and called our hotline for advice they specifically asked me if I had this symptom (I didn't). So far, that had been their most important predictor for a positive result, they said.

Since this is a rather unusual symptom I wonder if it could be used for differential diagnoses or rather allow people to get tested even in the absence of other symptoms.

Or is loss of smell/taste common in other infections, too?

 

Ive had loss of taste, when I’ve had other respiratory type infections in the past.. ones that have led to vertigo. Not loss of smell except when nose has been very bunged up and I need to use lots of tissues and blow my nose etc, so that’s more expected.

Edited to add, I do think this loss of smell should be something that they should pick up on and add to list of symptoms to ask about.

 

If it is for the US, it ties in with what had been reported earlier for the UK :

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/loss-of-smell-and-taste-a-key-symptom-for-covid-19-cases

 

Copied post

Yes... common in other infections... is what I have heard.

I’m waking up to (on radio) somewhat depressing predictions for Australia’s future...

Ongoing outbreaks predicted until the year 2025. Low standard of living to be expected for years.

And...

Lack of PPE for Japanese health workers... calling for plastic raincoats, ponchos, anything... terrible.

 

Ive been trying to find out where those patients in the chart are from. I’ve just found out that the data is from the UK, not the US, so I will edit my first post.

The person who shared this chart, Eric Topol, is a scientist in the US and said on twitter: “The #COVID19 symptom complex, as we've learned thru a smartphone app used by 1.5 M people, demonstrating the prominence of loss of smell”. And next to it he gave a link to the USA version of the app (also done with Kings College London, as well as some American universities too).

But then there is also a link to this article
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01023-2 Which says:

“App data suggest loss of smell is a key symptom of coronavirus infection
The loss of sense of smell and taste should be considered a symptom of COVID-19, suggest the first results from a UK-based symptom-tracking app. There have been many anecdotal reports of the phenomenon in relation to COVID-19, but loss of smell — known scientifically as anosmia — is not currently listed as a symptom of the disease by the World Health Organization.

The COVID Symptom Tracker smartphone app, which has recruited more than 1.5 million people in the United Kingdom, asks users to record health information on a daily basis, including potential symptoms of coronavirus infection. An analysis of data collected between 24 and 29 March found that users who tested positive for COVID-19 were three times more likely to report losing their sense of smell than were those who had symptoms of the virus but tested negative. Of the 579 who tested positive for COVID-19, 59% reported losing their sense of smell, compared with 18% of the 1,123 who tested negative. These findings were published in a preprint on 7 April (C. Menni et al. Preprint at medRxiv http://doi.org/drkq; 2020). Updated but as-yet unpublished figures from the same group show a similar trend (see ‘Tracking symptoms’). The researchers say that people experiencing loss of smell should self-isolate.

Other common symptoms reported by people who tested positive were fever, persistent cough, fatigue, diarrhoea, abdominal pain and loss of appetite.”

 

Ah, so aside from fever and cough, basically a typical ME day.

Must be negative thoughts, I guess. Or wild expectations about normalcy. At least that's what I'm told by very serious people who assure everyone this is nothing and should be ignored. Unless you can test for the virus. Then it's all reeeeal.

 

And I think the gastric symptoms extend beyond diarrhoea, don't they? Something else which seems to have got filtered out en route from China.

 

I don't know about the reliability of the source, but this article talks about a "strange neurological symptom" being reported by a couple of people in the wake of Covid-19 infection. One person talks about feeling like their brain occasionally "short circuits," and another says "Yeah I know what you mean. Like you have had a bottle of wine and you zone out." The article suggests it may be what others refer to as "mental fatigue" or "brain fog."

I noticed something like this not long before what I consider the onset of ME/CFS. It was in the wake of a bad upper respiratory infection that had started a couple of weeks earlier. I would just stop what I was doing, lean on something and "zone out." My eyes would cease to converge - in fact, my right eye would turn way out to the right while the other still looked forward. Naturally, this would give me something like double vision, but more extreme, as the two images were so dissimilar. It was not unpleasant, sort of like a prolonged state on the edge of falling asleep, but I would eventually snap myself out of it. I just thought I was tired, but I didn't understand why I was tired. About a week later, I got the serious and persistent attack of vertigo which I've always considered to be the unambiguous onset of my case of ME/CFS. I have wondered, though, if this "zoning out" was a an earlier, subtler sign that something was going wrong.

 

What Covid does to the body

"Does a dangerous, newly observed tendency to blood clotting transform some mild cases into life-threatening emergencies?

Is an overzealous immune response behind the worst cases, suggesting treatment with immune-suppressing drugs could help?

What explains the startlingly low blood oxygen that some physicians are reporting in patients who nonetheless are not gasping for breath?

'Taking a systems approach may be beneficial as we start thinking about therapies,' says Nilam Mangalmurti, a pulmonary intensivist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP)."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/

This just appeared in the Washington post; seems young people with Covid are getting strokes.

 

That is scary. Someone I know lost her sister, who I'd guess would be late 30s/early 40s recently unexpectedly to a stroke, but she also tested positive for Covid-19 in hospital. What if it was actually the other way round, and she had Covid, but just took a while for it to show up, as has happened so often?

 

Viral Brain Attack: Neurologic Manifestations Of COVID-19

This is completely incompatible with the FND/MUS/BPS ideology. In fact, they become dangerous. Well, more dangerous.

 

A very good article

We Still Don’t Know How the Coronavirus Is Killing Us

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/04/we-still-dont-know-how-the-coronavirus-is-killing-us.html?

The clinical shape of the disease, long presumed to be a relatively predictable respiratory infection, is getting less clear by the week. Lately, it seems, by the day. As Carl Zimmer, probably the country’s most respected science journalist, asked virologists in a tweet last week, “is there any other virus out there that is this weird in terms of its range of symptoms?”

 

Actually, the answer would be enterovirus but we don't talk about those. (also an RNA virus)

 

Presumed. That's the trouble right there. Science should be very clear about the assumptions it makes.

Just because medicine likes to fit diseases into neat pigeon holes - endocrinologist for this, rheumatologist for that, neurologist for the other and if you need to see too many it's the psychologists for you, while psychology likes to try to fit people and their personalities into neat little boxes.

Nature be it biological or psychological is not box shaped. Keep trying to force your arbitrary theoretical constructs onto nature and you will keep doing harm.

Hopefully, scientists & medics will realize that what we assume or think we know can be a massive obstruction between us and what we need to learn.

 

Here's a symptom we haven't see too often: this was just published here in Canada.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coron...-in-children-infected-with-covid-19-1.4913770

(Actually, what I find interesting is that our family member had toes like this for months and months at various moments of this ME nightmare she lives in.)

 

There are reports on children developing Kawasaki or toxic shock syndrome like symptoms. The connection to Covid is unclear though since not all test positive

"There is a growing concern that a Sars-CoV-2-related inflammatory syndrome is emerging in children in the UK, or that there may be another, as yet unidentified, infectious pathogen associated with these cases.”

 

15 Children Are Hospitalized With Mysterious Illness Possibly Tied to Covid-19

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/nyregion/children-Kawasaki-syndrome-coronavirus.html

Very worrying given how common the calls are for to essentially expose children to the virus since they display few symptoms. Going very quickly from "children are probably immune" to "children don't seem to have symptoms" to "children probably only have mild symptoms" and now this.

It seems rare but the early focus on elderly patients mostly dying of respiratory illness have anchored a lot of the information since.